Today was a special day, not just as this would be the first time we had run the car for nearly 10 months but it was also my 60th birthday which didn't go unnoticed thanks to the crew and my wife.
We go to the track nice and early did a quick bit of fettling and warmed the car up everything seemed ok, we waited for some cars to get up the track then we towed down for our first go at the new concrete track.
First thing I noticed was I couldn't get the tyres to spin up properly the car nearly died when I shifted into second but I had a go at the track anyway but she bogged off the line and when she did pick up she slid I did this a couple of times then just let her idle through. back in the pits Steve thought she was over fuelling so changed the pill size we armed her up and tried again.
Fired her up and made my way to the start went for the burn out but again it wasn't quite right I then couldn't get reverse I tried a couple of times then noticed and smelt smoke coming up from the cockpit so I shut her down and got pushed back behind the start line where we found one of the trans-brake wires had shorted out, we fixed this in place and Steve also took a smidge of timing out this however gave me another problem after the next burnout the revs shot up on tick-over to nearly 3000 rpm I could hardly hold her on the brake I took the lights and she nosed over stuttered and again I just let her idle through the top end. Back in the pits we realised we had gone the wrong with the pill sizes and had in fact put more fuel in instead of taking it out so a quick re-calculation another warm up and we were ready for another run this time we ran side by side with the Brown boys slingshot, the car sounded a lot better even managed to get some smoke form the burn out...
Still not right but a lot better, so back in the pits a quick turn round then we went for another warm up we were going to try and get another run in before the rain hit but we couldn't start the car a quick look around found a terminal had broken on the micro switch that acted as the inhibitor switch for the gear linkage, this was fixed in double quick time thanks to the super crew working flat out and we went down for our last run.
Again not perfect I peddled a couple of times when the crew came to pick me up Steve mentioned that he had not adjust the barrel valve so we can't complain we had got the car down the track four times and we took her home in one piece. Back in the pits Steve found the fuel we had been using had been contaminated which may have accounted for some of our problems, we had a good day and we all went home happy...now that's a first, next stop the Nostalgia Nationals.
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